April 1, 2022
Gr 2-5-Hannah-Jones's seminal The 1619 Project becomes a 24-minute lyrical gift for youngest readers, rendered with Newbery Honoree Watson. Hannah-Jones voices the affecting verses: gentle through the horror, solemn to encourage empowerment, inviting to share the joy. A Black girl's school assignment to "trace your roots" leaves her "ashamed" because she "can only count back three generations." Grandma is her powerful antidote: "Let me tell you where we're from." Grandma reveals a story of "a home, a place, a land, a beginning" in the Kingdom of Ndongo where ancestors lived free...until the White Lion arrived in 1619 to steal the people to be whipped, chained, sold, enslaved in the New World. As Hannah-Jones and Watson remind in their authors' note, "Black Americans have their own proud origin story." VERDICT A must-have for every library: pair with the Nikkolas Smith-illustrated printed book for a phenomenal, immersive experience.
Copyright 2022 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from October 11, 2021
When a Black child, this story’s narrator, feels shame surrounding a family tree assignment (“I can only count back three generations, here, in this country”), their parents and grandparents offer what an author’s note calls “a proud origin story.” In meticulous, forthright poems by Newbery Honoree Watson and 1619 Project founder Hannah-Jones, the family reaches back to the Kingdom of Ndongo, where their ancestors “had a home, a place, a land,/ a beginning.” Subsequent spreads describe the child’s West Central African forbears, who spoke Kimbundu (“had their own words/ for love/ for friend/ for family”), were good with their hands and minds, excelled at math and science, “and they danced.” When the lines recount how, in 1619, those ancestors were shackled and ferried across the Atlantic to Virginia on the White Lion, the authors clearly but non-graphically confront the horror of chattel slavery, emphasizing the resilience of the enslaved people who survived this impossible journey. Alternating between realistic and surreal images, Smith (World Cup Women) works in a saturated palette to create emotionally evocative scenes: dark, mostly monochrome tableaus convey tragedy or violence; brightly lit, multicolor palettes illustrate scenes of peace and joy. While detailing the specifics of an often-obscured history and its effects, this volume powerfully emphasizes that Black history is not merely a story of slavery and suffering but one of perseverance and hope. Ages 7–10.